Dawn of the Slayer Age
by Alecca
Summary: In a distant future,a powerful slayer has built an army to destroy humanity.To stop her,a geneticist clones Buffy to lead the human army,but the clone feels disconnected with the world she has awakened to so it's up to Spike, the only one left from the or
1. Prologue

Author's note: This is an even stranger idea I got, so I will ask new readers as well as those who are already familiar with my work to bare with me. This story concludes my Time Saga (fics that have revolved one way or another around the future and past - they're not connected with one another - the first and second installments in the saga being "A time for everything and everything at a time" and "Birth Right").  
  
Dawn of the Slayer Age  
  
Prologue  
  
Extract from the journal of doctor Haydn Cohegen  
  
The year is 3014. Humanity has long left behind its home planet and has expanded its plane of existence into space. It has been a long time since any humans have returned to Earth. It has been a long time since anyone cared to look back. But I see myself forced to turn my head centuries into the past to overcome the difficulty that has been forced upon humanity by one person. A leader, fearless, they say, cold hearted and destined to rule over all of humanity. Cincineel, not a real name, but a real person and very real threat.  
  
In the old days, she would have been referred to as a slayer. A person carrying within herself a mystical heritage. Folklore I say, but one is entitled to believe what one wishes. Extraordinary women, gifted with immense physical strength. One born in each generation in the beginning - a fact changed abruptly sometime at the beginning of the 21th century by a powerful slayer. She is one of the reasons I search the past for answers. For a solution.  
  
Because of this change, their number grew and grew and today, in this age, it has given Cincineel the army she needed to conquer the Empire of Man. She has already taken great cities, countries, planets and she will not stop. She is the reason why the High Council has built an army big enough to confront hers, but, they realized, they had no leader fit to take it into battle. And that's how I was assigned to my current mission. To seek and find a person to occupy this position. A slayer without any doubt would be needed.  
  
But where to find one? All the slayers have joined Cincineel's army or are too weak to rule one. No, I needed someone else. A slayer powerful enough to defeat Cincineel. In the present, I could not find her, because the most powerful and cunning is Cincineel. So I searched the past. Day and night. I looked through books - those silly things made of paper - and eventually I came over a name. A name above all others. A slayer above all others. The one who the books referred to as the one and only, the greatest that had ever lived, the incomparable, the strongest. She was the one I needed.  
  
I cannot bring myself into the past, but I can bring the past to me. She will live again. A perfect duplicate of the slayer of all slayers, Buffy Summers. Of course she will need training and growth will have to be forced upon her, but where there is a fine genetic material there will be a fine clone. And to make her as close to the original as possible I will enlist the help of the most unlikeliest of creatures - a vampire. A walking corpse. The presence of which in our time surprises me deeply as slayers have long decimated this specie into oblivion. This vampire that has supposedly lived over a millenium knew the original Buffy Summers and that is why he is essential to my mission. I've sent an elite group of mercenaries after him and I hope they will find him.  
  
My goal is to somehow force this duplicate I will create into recalling more than her simple genetic memory. I want her to believe herself to be the true Buffy Summers. Because it is only this way that she will have the confidence in herself to defeat Cincineel and her slayer army.  
  
Written on the walls of the High Council's Headquarters on the planet Quburra  
  
Humans, be gone! Your age has ended and Cincineel is here to claim your throne! The time of man is over, now begins the Age of the Slayer!  
  
End Prologue 


	2. Anne

Part 1  
Anne  
  
Five months ago  
Planet Earth  
  
The men in the heavy protection suits moved across the rubble flashing powerful lights over the remnants of what had once been the hellmouth. The people in charge of the digging had risen so much dust in the air that one could no longer breath without a mask. One of the men wiped the dust off the transparent helmet that covered his head and sighed heavily before pressing a button on the side of the helmet and asking:  
  
"Sir, are you sure about this? I don't see how we can find anything underneath all this..."  
  
"I'm absolutely positive, sergeant," a voice answered the man's question.  
  
"Then we'll do the best we can," he assured him and pushed the button on the helmet again, cutting off the transmission.  
  
"What does the doctor say?" another man approached the sergeant.  
  
"To keep looking," his flashed his light on the ground.  
  
"If you ask me the man's kept his head buried in those damn books far too long. Started believing all that mumbo-jumbo," the other man scoffed. "And here we are, on Planet Trash looking for a 1000 year old blood."  
  
"If he believes it's here, then he probably has a reason to," the sergeant assured him. "And have a little respect for the planet that gave birth to our species, Sollis."  
  
"Yes, sir," the man moved away, continuing his search.  
  
"Sergeant!" a booming voice was heard from somewhere afar. "I think I found it."  
  
"I can't believe it!" Sollis let out incredulous. The sergeant rushed towards the soldier that had called out to him. The man was holding up a very old looking sword.  
  
"How can this be possible?" the man asked obviously shocked at the sight of the sword covered in blood.  
  
"You'll have to ask the doctor about that," the sergeant said swallowing hard. "Are you sure this is the one? That it's not a false alarm again?"  
  
"Pretty sure, sir," the man held out a device, no bigger than a box of matches, and passed it across the surface of the sword. "It's slayer blood. A particularly strong one. It matches the sample we were given a 62%. That's about 30% more than we found in the others. And this is the sort of weapon we were advised to search for."  
  
"The weapon isn't relevant here," the sergeant said looking back at a mountain of swords they had dug up and tossed aside since the beginning of their mission.  
  
"I'm not sure we could find more than a 62% match, sir. It's been over a 1000 years," the man pointed out.  
  
"Then this must be it. We'll have to send it to the doctor for a more thorough analysis though," the sergeant said.  
  
"The strange thing is, sir," the man stared at the sword again. "The DNA analyzer recognizes it as fresh blood."  
  
"That's because it is," the sergeant took the sword from him. He had been warned that such strange occurrences could take place during their mission. "A 1000 year old fresh," he smiled.  
  
4 month and 3 weeks ago  
  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
The gigantic screen showed the spiraling DNA sample as a team of specialists looked on. One of them shook his head and called out for doctor Cohegen:  
  
"We can't do anything with it. It's incomplete," he told him. "The sequence isn't enough to produce a proper clone."  
  
"I figured it wouldn't be, so I've made arrangements," Haydn Cohegen said staring at the screen. "I've tracked down her descendents. Unfortunately there is only one currently alive. A girl. The way I found her is quite amusing actually."  
  
"Is it?" his colleague looked at him strangely.  
  
"Yes, very much so. She's Cincineel's right hand. A slayer. Which does help our cause a great deal. Matching a human DNA to a slayer one is quite impossible. Or for the very least incompatible," Haydn pointed out.  
  
"Cincineel's right hand? Well, that puts an end to this experiment," the other man said disappointed.  
  
"Don't be so hasty, doctor. Our slayer should be on her way here as we speak," Haydn smiled.  
  
"How did you...?" the man looked at him surprised.  
  
"I found someone willing to work from the inside," he answered him.  
  
"A traitor in Cincineel's army?" he smirked.  
  
"Yes, but unfortunately, not one high ranking enough to reveal anything we don't already know," Haydn said. "But desperate enough to kidnap Buffy Summers' descendent."  
  
"Kidnap her? Wouldn't a blood sample have been enough?" the doctor asked.  
  
"It's safer to have her here, in case the first experiment doesn't succeed," he replied.  
  
The Planet Corrian  
Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army  
  
He walked down the hallway trying to hide his nervousness and the inner turmoil that was consuming him. He had no idea if he was doing the right thing. Perhaps, he shouldn't have been such a coward and dedicated himself, like the rest of them, to their cause to the very end. But the mere thought of what would happen to him made him angry. How dared they, after all he had done for them?  
  
"Niya!" he called out to the girl that had just entered the corridor through a sliding door. She seemed lost in thoughts as she stopped and looked up at him. She was short, a head smaller than him, with dark hair and disturbingly blue eyes.  
  
"Dollorian," she saluted him shortly. "What is it?"  
  
"I found a flaw in your ship's guidance system. I thought that you'd want to take a personal look at it," he told her gesturing towards the other end of the hallway that lead to the landing zone for stellar ships.  
  
"Can we go now? I have a heavy briefing session in about an hour," she explained.  
  
"This won't take you more than ten minutes," he assured her as he lead her down the corridor.  
  
The landing zone was dark, but not empty. Various slayers, women and men, were busy repairing or boarding ships. Dollarian lead Niya inside her ship and the girl immediately began checking the guidance system.  
  
"Are you sure it was the guidance system?" she asked looking back at him with a frown on her face. "It seems fine."  
  
"You have to dig just beneath the surface," he told her and pretended to think everything through for a moment before adding: "I think you'd understand what I mean if you saw the ship flying."  
  
"Okay, but this better be good," Niya said opening a communicator to the ground base. "This is Nightcrawler 741, I'm heading out for a routine flight."  
  
"Roger that, 741," a voice replied and she switched off the communicator. Dollarian pushed a metal device filled with tranquilizer against her neck. As the liquid drained into the veins of the slayer she fell into a deep sleep. When he removed the device, it left a bloody V made of small needle points on her neck.  
  
4 months and 2 weeks ago  
  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
The girl squirmed and screamed in the background behind the glass windows while Dollorian stared quietly at his shoes, trying to ignore her. The sound of footsteps nearing made him look up startled. Haydn gave him a sympathetic smile.  
  
"Do they really have to do that?" Dollorian asked looking at Niya beyond the glass windows.  
  
"They wouldn't if she cooperated," the doctor told him following his gaze.  
  
"I...I did abduct her," he pointed out stuttering.  
  
"Do you feel sorry for what you did?" Haydn asked slightly amused.  
  
"I...don't know what to feel," he admitted.  
  
"You'll feel very grateful when you'll still be alive in two months," he assured him. "You did the right thing. Cincineel has taken everything too far."  
  
"And you're not?" Dollorian rose his eyebrows questioningly.  
  
"Let's just say I'm doing what needs to be done," the doctor said staring back at Niya still struggling in her bounds as doctors roamed around her.  
  
2 months and 6 days ago  
  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
The baby floated in the cylindrical tank filled with strange translucent liquids, her eyes closed, an artificial umbilical cord leading somewhere in the floor of the metal womb she had been created in. Various doctors and nurses moved around the tank, all under the influence of a sudden rush of nervousness that had taken control of their minds and bodies since that morning. This was the day when the baby reached its nine month deadline. Haydn paced around the laboratory, as nervous as a father awaiting the birth of his child.  
  
Slowly, the liquid inside the tank was drained and the baby landed gently on its floor, the umbilical cord cutting itself off automatically. Suddenly finding herself outside her warm, nurturing artificial womb, in the cold darkness of this new world, the baby screamed. Haydn looked up startled as a nurse wrapped a white blanket around the new born child. A baby girl.  
  
"Doctor, would you like to hold her?" the nurse holding the baby asked him coming closer. "She's just the sweetest thing."  
  
"Yes, of course," Haydn extended his arms and the woman put the small white bundle in his hands. He looked down at her and smiled. What a perfect little...the baby looked up at him strangely and he gasped. "She's flawed," he let out incredulously. The baby's eyes were blue, the same deep blue of Niya's eyes.  
  
"Don't all babies have blue eyes when they're born?" the nurse asked confused. "The real color establishes itself only after a few weeks."  
  
"Not this one," Haydn said frowning. "Take her," she shoved the child back into the woman's warms. The baby started crying from the brutal gesture. "Put her in the growth inducer. We decided on age 19. She won't be taken out of the device until she reaches that age, are we understood?"  
  
"Yes, sir," the nurse nodded and looked down at the child with pity. "What should we call her? Buffy?"  
  
"No," Haydn stared at the imperfect duplicate of Buffy Summers he had created. "Her name will be Anne. She's not as good as the original, she doesn't deserve her name," he stormed out of the lab, but the nurse had stopped listening to him and instead smiled at the beautiful baby:  
  
"Annie, Annie, little Annie..."  
  
6 days ago  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
"She's quite an extraordinary specimen," one of the geneticists said staring at the naked girl still locked inside the growth inducer, fallen in what looked like a deep trance. "What have you done about the memories?"  
  
"We preferred to leave them blank because we didn't have enough details to fully recreate them," Haydn explained. "We've introduced the basic skills though: writing, reading, language knowledge, basic calculus, definitions for things and situations she might come across when she awakens. Basically she will be like a person who has lived in the world for 19 years, but has absolutely no emotional memories. We also thought it was necessary to insert a certain amount of combat skills into her mind, considering the situation."  
  
"You think that's wise?" the other geneticist asked looking back at the doctor. "Aren't you afraid that she might act violent when she awakens?"  
  
"Given the state of general confusion she will be in, I doubt she'll attack anyone," Haydn said.  
  
"Have you given her a history of her kind? Of the slayers and the current situation?" another doctor asked.  
  
"We've introduced the basic slayer codex. She knows what she is, but doesn't know anything about the rest. I thought it would be best if it were explained to her when she awakens. Preferably by a familiar face," he smiled.  
  
"How is that going by the way?" the first geneticist asked.  
  
"They tracked him down on some obscure moon of the planet Kitrrena. I'm sure it won't be long until he'll be our guest here," Haydn answered and looked down at his watch "It's time."  
  
He neared the growth inducer and typed a code on its control panel. The doors unsealed and Haydn took off his lab coat and wrapped it around the still sleeping naked girl.  
  
"Anne," he said gently. The girl didn't react. "Anne," he put his hand on her shoulder. With a violent convulsion, she pulled away, hitting the back of the growth inducer and opening her eyes. Haydn sighed. Big blue eyes stared frightened into his dark ones. He had hoped - though he knew better - that somehow her eyes would have changed to green. "Hello, Anne," he extended a friendly unthreatening hand towards her. "I'm Haydn."  
  
"Where am I?" she asked staring confused at his hand before reluctantly shaking it, not really knowing why she was doing that.  
  
"Excellent reactions," Haydn said approvingly. "Do you know what year we're in?"  
  
"3000...3014," she said touching her forehead as if it hurt. Haydn stepped away from the doors of the inducer and held out a hand to her. She hesitantly took it and when she found herself in the laboratory and saw all the people staring at her, she instinctively hid behind Haydn, holding onto the sleeve of his shirt desperately.  
  
"It's all right," Haydn assured her, taking her hand and bringing her in front of the crowd of doctors again. She suddenly seemed to realize that she was almost naked and held Haydn's lab coat closer to her body.  
  
"Marvelous," one of the geneticists muttered in awe.  
  
"I don't know what you complained about, she's absolutely perfect," another doctor addressed Haydn.  
  
"Yeah," Haydn grunted and addressing his fellow doctors said: "I think it's best if we cut today's tests short. She needs some time to adjust." Taking Anne by the hand he led her out of the laboratory and into his private office.  
  
"If you ask me, he just wants her all for himself for a while. Selfishness of the creator," one of the doctors said staring after them.  
  
Once they were alone and Anne had sat down in a chair, Haydn asked her:  
  
"Is everything all right?"  
  
"All right," she repeated and looked around herself confused. She gazed at her bare feet tilting her head slightly, then, letting go of the lab coat she had been clutching around herself, stared at her hands. Haydn leaned down to pull the coat back around her chest and Anne caught his hand. She had never felt a human touch before. Not something she could remember anyway as she had been only a baby when she had been held by those very hands and many others. She stared down at the hand she had captured and brushed it across her face. "It's warm," she had no idea what the word meant. She had never been cold, never been warm.  
  
"It's okay," he told her pulling away his hand. He felt pity for her, he could only imagine what sort of state of mind someone waking up to realize he was a full grown human being was in.  
  
"I...," Anne began and stood up from the chair. "Food. I need food," she told him with a puzzled look on her face. "Here," she touched her naked stomach.  
  
"Good," Haydn nodded. "But we have to get you some clothes first."  
  
The second moon of the planet Kitrrena  
6 days ago  
  
He made his way towards the entrance of the run down bar when he heard the voices - commanding, so obviously military - demanding to know his whereabouts. The bar owner cowered somewhere in a corner, nervously trying to tell them that he had no idea where he lived. He neared the windows to have a peak inside. He accidentally stumbled over a bottle that made an all too loud sound in the night drawing the attention of the people inside. He quickly made a run for it, but he could hear them running behind him. Then suddenly, he hit a dead end. He prepared to jump the tall wall, when two soldiers hovered above it staring down at him, while three others came at him from the other end of the street.  
  
"Oh, bloody hell!" Spike let out frustrated.  
  
End Part 1 


	3. The Forgotten

Part 2  
The Forgotten  
  
4 days ago  
A ship on its way to the Planet Phenias  
  
"So let me get this straight...," Spike tried not to seem intimidated by the ten armed soldiers surrounding him as he eyed the interior of the ship in search of some kind of way to escape. "The Human High Council built themselves an army and they wanted a slayer to lead it so they had their researchers mojo a Buffy copy?"  
  
"A clone," one of the soldiers corrected him.  
  
"And you want me to do what?" he asked leaning back in his chair. He missed wooden chairs and disliked the metallic structures that had totally replaced them. "Turn her into a real little slayer?" he arched an eyebrow. He didn't know how to feel about it all. He had been disconnected from that time and world for so long that it seemed like a faraway dream now that only made his stomach tie up in a knot. Had he really lived it all? London, Cecily, Drusilla, Angelus, Sunnydale, Buffy Summers, death, Los Angeles, Angel...they were all names so distant and so foreign to his ears now, lost somewhere in the long forgotten graves. He hadn't seen the Earth in ages. He didn't want to see it again either. He absently touched the right side of his face, covered in a dark tattoo. He had been there. He had felt it on his own skin. His race dying, slaughtered mercilessly by armies of slayers. He had come close to being eliminated too. He had been lucky in only one thing: Buffy. It was her name, his affiliation to her that had spared him, but his salvation had come after he had been branded. The symbol on his face marked him for decapitation. He had never thought he would live to see the day when he would pity vampires, but then again he hadn't thought he would live to see many things. And perhaps he shouldn't have either.  
  
"No, we want you to turn her into Buffy Summers," a soldier snapped him out of his thoughts.  
  
"Do you?" he smirked. "Now see, that's where your problem is. Besides that she's not Buffy, because she's been dead for almost a 1000 years, how the bloody hell do you expect someone born in this day and age to be exactly like someone who lived in the year 2000?" he looked at them disgusted. "You people have no respect for the dead."  
  
"Let me make myself clear, blood sucker," the captain of the unit that had captured him spoke up. "I have absolutely no interest in whatever you or any of your kind have to say. You're a pest to our society and as far as I'm concerned your very existence is the reason we're dealing with the situation we are in right now. If your ignorant subspecie hadn't crawled out of a filthy primordial soup, there wouldn't have been any slayers. That woman would have never set her powers free and the slayers wouldn't have become bored enough over the ages to question the place and reason of humanity in the presence of their superiority. Now, talk all you want, but you're still coming with us and I'm here to make sure you'll be doing the job you were assigned to do."  
  
"Lucky for you my subspecie in on the brink of extinction then," Spike pointed out smiling again. "If you don't count those lovely petting zoos on Andalla."  
  
"I don't regret what was done to you one bit, but right now I wish they would've done the same thing to those damn slayers," the captain was referring to the vampire death camps that had eliminated a staggering 90% of all vampire kind. Demons had fled to other dimensions. When slayer numbers grew they knew they didn't stand a chance. But though the decision had a good impact on humanity, it was not the most fortunate of changes for slayer kind. Left without a purpose to their powers they slowly, but surely, began considering themselves the dominant species of the Earth and later on, of all life.  
  
"There were a few good ones, even then," Spike thought of the slayer that had fought for his freedom and life when he had been imprisoned in a death camp.  
  
The Planet Corrian  
Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army  
  
The tall, slim woman paced in front of the slayers seeming calm and undisturbed. In truth, she was angry, but her anger - her army knew - was cold and calculated, more close to hate. And this anger was enough to strike fear into the hearts of men and women. Today, that fear was consuming the crowd of people gathered before her.  
  
"It's been almost 5 months," her voice alone was intimidating, commanding and did not allow interruptions. She was their fearless leader, the model of superhuman perfection. She was Cincineel. "The safest thing to assume by now, I've been told, is that Niya is dead. Isn't that what you told me, Norrie?" Hearing her name spoken, Norrie, a blond girl sitting in the first row, startled and looked nervously around herself. "Well, I've recently received some information from a secure source. Niya is anything but dead. She was kidnapped by one of our own. A slayer. Dollorian Hess. You know, the one that we supposedly lost during a mission. He sold her to the Human High Council."  
  
"I knew it," one of the women spoke up.  
  
"Yes, yes, we've all heard it, Kenya," Cincineel eyed the woman annoyed. "This isn't the time or place to discuss sexist discriminations."  
  
"But it's obvious they're not satisfied with the conditioning of their powers," Kenya didn't give up.  
  
"Not now," Cincineel said with her jaw clenched. "We've been betrayed. Betrayal doesn't follow patterns or genders. It happens. It's just not suppose to happen in my army."  
  
"Do you want us to form a search party and retrieve Niya?" one of the men spoke up.  
  
"No, Thomas, I don't," her cold blue eyes, so light that they sometimes seemed almost white, stopped on the face of the man that had spoken. "I don't want them to know that we found out they have her. Or where they have her. I want them to think that we are absolutely clueless to what they are doing."  
  
"What do they want from her?" Norrie asked concerned.  
  
"Her genes," Cincineel simply answered. "But luckily, for every action there is a reaction," she gave a person sitting in the shadows a nod. The cloaked figure emerged from the darkness. The slayers looked at the stranger curious. "This is...what should I call you?"  
  
"You can call me Erinya," the clad figure answered her. Her entire body was covered in tight dark clothing that made her gender an easy guess: she was a woman. Her face and head were also hidden, only her eyes could be seen beyond the black fabric. From her place in the first row, Norrie tried to guess their color. Were they blue? Or was it green or a light brown color?  
  
"I will tell you in a few brief words what the Human High Council has in mind and what our course of action is. As you all know, they gathered themselves an army, however what you don't know is that they actually brought back Buffy Summers from the dead to lead it," Cincineel said and her audience was taken by surprise. "Well, they wanted a great slayer. They have one. We wanted someone to - of course - destroy her and we have her," she put a hand on Erinya's shoulder.  
  
"But who is she?" Thomas spoke up again. "If you actually risked having her here. If she's just a slayer hunter..."  
  
"Oh, no, she's much more than that," a knowing smiled appeared on Cincineel's lips. "Let's just say, I've seen what's under this mask and Buffy Summers herself will get quite a surprise. Erinya, would you...," she gestured towards her mask. Erinya gave her a small nod before removing the fabric from her face.  
  
"I'll be damned...," Kenya let out as the whole crowd looked at the woman's features stunned.  
  
"Any other questions?" Cincineel smiled satisfied.  
  
Present Day  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
"Hello, Anne, I'm doctor Vecka, I'm one of the people from the staff that takes care of you," he said as he neared the girl staring out the large windows of the spacious room/cell that had been given to her. She didn't even look back at him when he entered. She didn't even blink. "Anne," he called out to her. She didn't answer. "Anne," he gently put a hand on her shoulder. She startled slightly and looked up at him.  
  
"Doctor Donner?" she asked confused.  
  
"Domner," he corrected her. "But today is my shift. Doctor Vecka. You'll see doctor Domner again next week."  
  
"What's an angel?" she suddenly asked turning around.  
  
"An angel?" the doctor was taken by surprise. "Whatever made you ask such a question?"  
  
"What's an angel?" she asked again, more insistently. She wasn't about to answer him.  
  
"Well, an angel...an angel is a man with wings," he explained.  
  
"That's not what an angel is," Anne frowned and suddenly attacked the doctor. Three punches to the stomach and a nasty blow to the jaw and the poor doctor fell to the floor, convulsing in pain. Anne returned to the window and began staring outside again. She didn't even bother to turn her head when the doctor struggled to his feet and made a quick exit from the room.  
  
In a different part of the complex, in a smaller, less luxurious cell, Dollorian absently moved a spoon through a plate full of food. He looked up at the girl tied up in her bed and sighed:  
  
"You have to eat sometime, Niya," he told her, but the girl stubbornly refused to open her mouth when he attempted for the millionth time to tempt her with the spoon. "You'll kill yourself like this. Is that what you really want? To starve yourself to death? What sort of honorable death is that for a slayer?"  
  
"What would you know about honor?" she looked at him disgusted. "You betrayed your own kind. We took you in, we made you what you are..."  
  
"And you were going to kill me too," Dollorian reminded her. "A nice suicide mission and poof I'm out of your hair. Excuse me, but I don't think that's fair. No matter what you did for me in the past."  
  
"You knew what you were getting yourself into when you accepted the conditioning. For some men it lasts a lifetime, for others less. For the unlucky few it barely lasts a couple of months," she told him.  
  
"But somehow, I've never met one person for who it lasted a lifetime," he noted sarcastically.  
  
"It's not our fault if they died young. Even those for who it works," she defended herself. "What did they promise you if you brought me here?"  
  
"The one thing you and all your kind can't give me right now. Life," he said honestly. Niya laughed dryly.  
  
"And you actually believed them? You're more stupid than I thought you were. You think we haven't tried everything possible to modify and improve the conditioning? To avoid the waste of life?"  
  
"Perhaps you tried, but they never have," Dollorian pointed out. There was a moment of silence in which he tried again to feed her a spoon of rice. Niya simply turned her head away, refusing to eat. Dollorian closed his eyes exasperated.  
  
"Have you seen her?" she asked more calmly this time, turning back towards him.  
  
"Yes," he was silent again. "She has your eyes."  
  
"You think you could take this off me?" she pointed with her chin towards the straight jacket tied around her body.  
  
"You brought that on to yourself. You shouldn't have attacked the medical staff," he reminded her. He hadn't even been allowed to use a fork around her as a precaution.  
  
"How is the good doctor doing?" she asked him smiling.  
  
"Still in intensive care," Dollorian said. "You're lucky they gave up on the drug treatment they were planning on giving you."  
  
"Like those two months I spent asleep - or floating around in lalaland , whatever - weren't enough," she scoffed. "I have like a thousand needle points I have no idea where I got from. Or when."  
  
"They just took some samples," Dollorian assured her. "The doctor told me it could've been different if you had cooperated."  
  
"And become a traitor like you? No thanks," she gave him a long look. Dollorian stood up from his chair and sighing again headed towards the door. "Maybe if you bring me an apple next time you come I'll actually eat it."  
  
"I'll do that," Dollorian nodded before leaving the room.  
  
In the conference room of the Mundagoon Complex, Haydn Cohegen was going over a report he had just been handed by his fellow doctors. The men around the large metal table awaited his reaction patiently. He looked up from the computerized notepad when he was done:  
  
"An angel?" he asked confused.  
  
"You understand why we were so surprised," one of the doctors spoke up.  
  
"Are you feeling all right now, doctor Vecka?" Haydn looked over at the man standing somewhere on the right side of the table.  
  
"I have a few bruises and the left side of my face is slightly swollen, but I'll live," doctor Vecka assured him.  
  
"Perhaps she was outraged by your definition. Man with wings, was it?" he looked back down at the notepad. "Maybe she wanted a more religious definition. Have you tried messenger of god? Higher being? Something like that?"  
  
"That would've been me, doctor," one of the geneticists said rising his bandaged broken arm in the air.  
  
"Really?" Haydn asked surprised. "This is something we haven't counted on. What else can an angel be? Some sort of symbol? The mark of a society?"  
  
"No matter what it is, it doesn't justify her violent reactions," doctor Domner interfered. "Even if it implies some sort of element of her genetic memory, this sort of reaction is abnormal. Deficient."  
  
"We have no idea how she feels right now. She is a person who lived in the 21th century, but without memories, that has found herself in a body that is - but in some ways isn't - her own. She's confused. This sort of reaction is to be expected," doctor Vecka disagreed.  
  
"But an angel?" Haydn asked confused. "Why not a man with wings?"  
  
"Because that's not what an angel is to her," a voice suddenly said startling the doctors. The door had slid open without any noise and the vampire had entered unnoticed. He loved that even after so much time he could still take humans by surprise.  
  
Anne's room within the complex  
  
The girl was still staring out the window when the door opened again and the blond vampire entered carefully, trying to see if she felt him, as a slayer felt a vampire. She knew someone was there. Knew this wasn't another doctor, but that thing, that creature her senses spoke to her about. That something she was destined to kill. But she didn't want to kill anyone or anything. She just wanted to be left alone. To remember. Remember what? She didn't even know that. She closed her eyes sighing. She felt oddly tired, though it seemed she had been sleeping for nearly 20 years.  
  
The vampire was amazed. Her features, her hair - they had actually made it naturally blond - her small hands, her diminutive figure, her smooth skin. Perfection. It was like she had never aged, never died. Buffy Summers, eternal, as she should have been. Never sick, never old, never changing. The same over decades, over centuries, over millenias. That perfect same slayer he had loved so much. Then she opened her eyes and he noticed the difference. Deep blue eyes stared into his.  
  
"What's an angel?" she asked him, not seeming to recognize him. No memories, Spike remembered the doctor's words. How could she have memories that weren't her own? The vampire found himself wondering.  
  
"An angel...," he said nearing her until he was next to the window. "Is a very tall, brooding vampire. With a lot of gel in his hair. Look," he took in an unneeded breath of air and blew on the window gently, then began drawing his best Angel representation on it. Anne smiled at the drawing.  
  
"Angel," she murmured touching the wet surface of the window, but frowned when she realized she had ruined the drawing.  
  
"Don't worry, luv, I'll make you another one," Spike promised. Anne turned her head towards the interior of the room, searching for something. But before the vampire had a chance to ask what she was looking for, she bolted from the window and rummaging through a drawer, brought a notebook and a box of colored crayons back to him.  
  
"Paper? They actually gave you paper?" he hadn't seen a notebook in ages. Paper was deemed useless and a waste of resources so it was no longer used anywhere, people opting for computerized books and notepads instead.  
  
"What is a willow?" she asked smiling.  
  
"A willow is a redheaded witch...." he returned the smile as he opened the box of crayons and taking out a red one began drawing a figure on the first page of the notebook.  
  
End Part 2 


	4. No Killer Instinct

Part 3  
(No) Killer Instinct  
  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
Anne's room  
  
The wall was covered in drawings. Hours had gone by since Spike had entered Anne's room for the first time and now he stood in front of the wall proudly - unaware of the fact that his face was smudged with various colors - and pointed towards the very first drawing.  
  
"Now, let's start from the beginning. You are....," he trailed off.  
  
"A slayer," she looked at the drawing representing herself. A girl diminutive in stature, with blond hair and - this seemed strange to her - green eyes and a piece of chopped wood in one hand.  
  
"And a slayer is?" he asked looking down at her. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor on a colored pillow.  
  
"An individual with unnatural strength, stamina and regenerative capacities above the standard Homo sapiens level. Naturally developing only in the feminine gender, it can be artificially induced to the masculine one as well," Anne immediately answered. It was one of the definitions that had been inserted in her memory while her body had still been inside the growth inducer.  
  
"No, no, not like that," Spike protested. "Like this," he put on his best Giles-impression: "In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. Okay?"  
  
"Okay," Anne nodded and registered his words.  
  
"Now, the story goes like this. There was once a slayer named Buffy. She lived on the hellmouth in Sunnydale with her mum and little sister Dawn," he pointed at various drawings on the wall as he spoke.  
  
"Uh, and Giles!" Anne interfered enthusiastically pointing towards a drawing she had particularly liked. She had this strange feeling whenever she looked at it. As if it - that clumsy picture of a man in a tweed costume with glasses on his nose and an ever present book in his hand - reminded her of something very important, something nice and calm. Something funny and an awkward feeling she couldn't place. She was given no definition of love.  
  
"I'm getting there," Spike assured her as he went on: "She went to highschool there and the librarian just happened to also be her watcher, Giles," Anne clapped her hands together like a child at this comment. "There she met Willow, this sweet shy teenage girl. Sure later she was a little scary for a while, but that passed. Willow was best friends with..."  
  
"Xander!" Anne answered quickly.  
  
"Yeah, Xander. The goofy one," he said smiling. "And then there was Cordelia. It took her a while to come to - she was a regular bi...uhm, not so nice person at first - but eventually she turned out to be quite a woman. So I've been told anyway. Me and her never really had much interaction." He sighed before going on: "Then there was Angel. He was an evil vampire at first then a gypsy curse gave him his soul back. He...," he bit back any nasty comments he might have been tempted to make. It was no use to talk badly of the dead. "Buffy fell in love with him and they had this long - really long - complicated relationship which ended when he left for LA, but that's a whole other story. So, all of them," he gestured towards the drawings he had been pointing at before, "fought the forces of darkness together. Vampires, demons and such. Not many of those left these days though." There was a moment of silence. The long years - too many, way too many - seemed to suddenly all weigh heavily on Spike's heart. For a moment, he smirked, he had forgotten all about it. About the nightmares, the people that had passed away, slowly, one by one. Those he had loved, those he had hated, both of which he now terribly missed. For a moment he had been there again. Sunnydale. Buffy staring at him with gorgeous blue eyes. Buffy, in front of him. Buffy, somewhere far away and dying. Buffy, in his arms.  
  
"I know you, don't I?" confusion was written over Anne's features.  
  
"Hmm?" he snapped out of his reverie.  
  
"I know you," she repeated. "Don't I?"  
  
"Maybe. In another lifetime, luv," he said smiling bitterly.  
  
"When was that?" she asked tilting her head slightly.  
  
"A long long time ago. When Sunnydale was still there. When Earth was still all there," he turned back towards the wall of drawings. "That's me right there," he touched a drawing of himself without the tattoo covering half his face, with his old leather jacket.  
  
"Spike," she said slowly, looking at him strangely. She couldn't understand what was happening to him. She didn't know why it suddenly all seemed too hard for him and why he was sad. Sadness, another word not defined in her vocabulary.  
  
"And Anya and Andrew," he chuckled. "The most annoying bloke you could ever meet. And Tara..."  
  
"Where are they now? All of them?" she asked her gaze passing over all the drawings covering the wall in front of her.  
  
"They...," he trailed off. What was he suppose to say to this girl staring at him with a big smile on her face, excitedly awaiting for the end of a fairytale? "They lived happily ever after."  
  
"Happily ever after," she repeated, her smile seeming to widen as she looked back up at the small blond girl with green eyes who - she was sure - was looking right back at her.  
  
Niya's cell  
  
"You think I could see her?" she made a wide gesture with her free hand. "Anne or whatever they call her."  
  
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Dollorian said as he cut another piece of apple and gave it to her. "I doubt the doctors would agree. They'll think you won't be able to behave yourself."  
  
"Oh, come on," she frowned as she put the piece of apple in her mouth and began chewing it. "I could've choked you to death at least ten times since you freed my hand, but I didn't."  
  
"And I believe that's mainly because you were hungry," Dollorian replied smiling. "You'd probably try to kill her."  
  
"I don't have to be in the same room with her...," Niya offered. "I'm just curious to see how she looks. That's all. She's suppose to be the spitting imagine of the greatest slayer that ever lived. And plus she was my ancestor. You gotta admit that's something to be curious about."  
  
"I'll ask them," Dollorian promised as he handed her the last piece of apple and stood up.  
  
"You think you could at least leave this arm free?" she asked before taking a bite out of the piece of apple.  
  
"No, I can't. It's not really up to me and even if it were...I still don't trust you," Dollorian let her know before walking out of the room as one of the assistants entered to tie her back down to the bed. Niya smiled amused.  
  
The Planet Corrian  
Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army  
  
Cincineel's chambers  
  
She stared at the ceiling as the light of the three moons of the planet Corrian shone in through the windows left wide open. Silken curtains moved under the touch of the midnight breeze. On the planet Phenias, she supposed, it was morning already. Here, it was barely midnight. What an odd thing fate was - she smiled - of all the slayers, from all the universes, it had to have been her. That one. She frowned when she heard the door cracking open. A figure advanced through the darkness of her chamber.  
  
"I didn't send for you," she said, her eyes not even wondering towards the man that had entered her room. She knew exactly who it was.  
  
"I know," he stopped a foot away from the bed. Cincineel was laying on the edge of the bed, her pillow cast aside and her sheets barely covering her.  
  
"Tell me something, Thomas, do you think that you are in some privileged because I'm sleeping with you?" she asked not rising from the bed to greet her unwelcomed guest.  
  
"I don't demand privilege," he said biting his lip.  
  
"Good," she smiled. "I don't want you to get ideas - illusions - into your head. I am what I am and you are still nothing. I don't have to remind you what happened to Neal, do I?"  
  
"Of course not," he bowed his head slightly. "I was just concerned for you. Am I allowed to feel that?" he asked with a forced smile on his lips.  
  
"I don't dictate what you feel, Thomas, though it would be so much easier if I could," she said rising to a sitting position. She sighed before asking: "So what exactly are you worried about?"  
  
"This whole situation. That...thing you hired to kill the clone," he admitted.  
  
"That thing has a name and I didn't hire her, I bred her," a thin smile crossed her lips.  
  
"Something everyone here seems to be clueless to or at least refusing to discuss or believe," Thomas pointed out.  
  
"What happens behind closed doors, stays behind closed doors," Cincineel replied. "Precisely why no one knows about my little experiment. Except you. Call it the privilege of being my..."  
  
"Erinya, what kind of name is that anyway?" he intentionally interrupted her.  
  
"Are you ashamed of what you are, Thomas?" she asked rising to her feet and closing in on him.  
  
"No," he answered dryly.  
  
"Good," she was dangerously invading his private space. She was naked, her covers disregarded on the floor somewhere. "Because I'm certainly not embarrassed by it," deep green eyes stared into Thomas's gray ones. The next moment they were kissing.  
  
Planet Phenias  
The Mundagoon Complex  
  
"Doctor Cohegen!" Dollorian yelled after him and the geneticist stopped in his tracks waiting for him to catch up with him.  
  
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Haydn asked him when he was finally at his side.  
  
"It's Niya. She wants to see Anne," he told him.  
  
"And what on earth made you think I'd even consider that absurd request?" the doctor asked amused.  
  
"She said she just wants to see her. She doesn't have to be in the same room with her," Dollorian explained. "That made me think the request was less ridiculous."  
  
"Well," he pondered his words for a few moments. "I'll think about it."  
  
"I'll let her know," Dollorian said and he was about to turn around when it hit him with all its force. A tsunami-size spasm that rocked his body from head to toe. He fell to the floor almost instantly while his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he screamed in pain.  
  
"Get a medical team down to corridor H218 immediately!" the doctor requested through his transmitter as he crouched down next to the shaking slayer. "Dollorian, I need you not to panic mentally, it will only speed the process and the toxins will reach your brain faster. Focus on a point. Any point right in front of you. Don't think of anything else."  
  
As Dollorian breathed heavily and tried hard to concentrate on a point, a doctor and two assistants came rushing in with a levitating gurney and slowly lifted him onto it. The doctor began quickly examining him while Haydn watched from the side.  
  
"What happened?" the doctor asked him and Haydn shrugged:  
  
"One moment he was fine, the next he was convulsing on the floor."  
  
"How long since the conditioning was administered to him? You were the one who contacted him, right?" the doctor asked as he used a device to check on Dollorian's quickening pulse.  
  
"I think it was 5 years ago, but he was labeled as a hazard around five months ago by the Slayer Liberation army," Haydn explained.  
  
"Then there's nothing we can do about it," the doctor said looking up from the device he had been staring at.  
  
"I promised him we would look into the conditioning and prolong his life," Haydn said frowning. "You're saying that's impossible?"  
  
"Pretty much," he sighed. "The slayer conditioning for the male genome is flawed simply because the male genome is not female. It never assimilates a 100%. No matter how well a body accepts the conditioning it will never last a life time. My best guess is 20 years tops." The doctor turned towards one of the assistants. "Prepare a shot of CremlanD7. It should calm his muscles and slow the spasms down."  
  
"So there's nothing you can do?" Haydn asked.  
  
"To prolong his life? No," he shook his head. "But we can ease his pain. There's an experimental drug that's suppose to eliminate all pain and side effects of the conditioning. Convulsions, dizziness, vision loss, uncontrollable shaking, loss of equilibrium..."  
  
"All gone?" Haydn asked impressed as the doctor gave Dollorian his shot. "And it doesn't postpone death?"  
  
"No. It basically makes his body ignore its own inner decay. He'll feel absolutely fine until one morning when he won't wake up anymore," the doctor said as Dollorian's body stopped shaking, the slayer falling into a deep sleep.  
  
"When he wakes up, tell him you're working on an antidote to his condition," doctor Cohegen said in a commanding voice. "In two days you'll call him into your office and you'll tell him you found it. Make up some name for it and give him the drug you told me about. He'll feel fine and you'll tell him he is fine, no matter what his tests show. It's absolutely crucial he doesn't know that he's dying and we can't do anything about it, you understand?"  
  
"Of course," the doctor nodded as he gestured towards the two assistants to take Dollorian to the hospital wing. He saluted Haydn respectably before following them. Left alone, doctor Cohegen continued towards his office as he had initially intended. To his surprise, he found Spike there.  
  
"How's Anne?" he asked the vampire.  
  
"Sleeping," Spike said looking up at him.  
  
"So what's your opinion?" the geneticist asked curious. "As an expert. I mean you've met the real Buffy Summers. Does Anne rise to her level?"  
  
"She's a bit different. And I don't mean just the eyes," the vampire told him. "But you can't expect her to be the same. It's been a thousand years for god's sake. She does have her spark though, her smile, her...," an expression of reverie crossed the vampire's features. "It's like she's...a bloody second Buffy Summers!"  
  
"Fourth," Haydn corrected him.  
  
"Huh?" Spike asked confused.  
  
"She's the fourth Buffy Summers. There were two more experiments before Anne. One failed in the embryo stage while the second began showing horrible mutations during the fetus stage and we were forced to terminate it," he explained.  
  
"Second, fourth, whatever. The point is she looks just like her, acts like her sometimes, has the same gestures, doesn't quite talk like her - though that's mostly because of all the garbage you put in her mind," he eyed the doctor as he spoke.  
  
"You consider our experiment to be successful then?" he seemed pleased.  
  
"She's no experiment, but if you're asking whether she's a living breathing copy of Buffy Summers, then yeah she is," Spike nodded.  
  
"Excellent," Haydn smiled. "Then we can move on to the next stage. Though I do want you to see her on a daily basis. I think it will help her a great deal to have someone familiar around her."  
  
"Next stage?" Spike asked rising his eyebrows surprised.  
  
"Of course. We're not only breeding someone your nostalgia can feed on, Spike, we're breeding a military leader," he reminded him as he gestured for him to follow him out of his office. Speaking in his transmitter he said: "Prepare the cage."  
  
"You're not putting her in a bloody cage!" Spike protested.  
  
"It's not for her," Ersnt assured him as the vampire realized they were heading towards Anne's room and that they weren't the only ones going in that direction, but they didn't enter her room, but one just beside hers. He entered curiously inside and immediately realized what was going to happen. The large chamber was decorated like - an ancient by now - training room. Next to one of the walls a cage had been brought and inside it was a snarling gigantic creature. A Kevdon demon. An endangered species in this dimension. All thanks to the slayer crusades that had plagued the Earth and the known universe.  
  
"Bring her in," doctor Cohegen told two assistants. The men opened a door that lead to Anne's room and disappeared for a few moments. Spike felt nervous about the whole situation. A very sleepy Anne entered, rubbing her eyes and yawning, after the two assistants that were sent to fetch her.  
  
"What's going on?" she asked tiredly seeing the large public that was gathered in the room. She had gotten used to the presence of all the doctors.  
  
"Anne, it's time to test your instincts," Haydn said coming closer to her as Anne looked frightened at the cage she had just spotted behind him. "You don't have to be scared. It's in your blood."  
  
As the assistants moved to open the cage, Spike wanted to stop them, but a firm hand on his shoulder prevented him from advancing.  
  
"It's going to be fine," the doctor that had stopped him told him. "We just want to see if she has the right instincts. She won't be in any real danger. If her slayer powers won't help her, doctor Cohegen fed her every known martial arts form humanity has ever known. She's a walking killing machine." Spike relaxed considerably after hearing those words.  
  
As soon as the cage was open the demon threw the assistants out of the way and stalked towards Anne threateningly while the doctors hid behind an unbreakable glass case. Spike refused to join them, preferring to stay outside in case Anne needed his help. The slayer looked at the demon horrified as she backed away towards the wall.  
  
"Doctor Cohegen?" she looked helpless over at Haydn behind the glass case, but the doctor didn't answer her calling. "Spike?" she turned her head towards the vampire.  
  
"Relax, luv, you'll do fine," he assured her. The demon smacked Anne across the face sending her flying into the glass case. She scrambled to her feet and helplessly tried to open the door to her room, but she couldn't do it. "Fight him!" the vampire encouraged her with his fists clenched. The demon caught up with Anne again and threw her to the floor and began pounding her with his large fists. Still, she did nothing. Spike couldn't take it anymore and launched himself at the demon grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him off Anne. It was easy for him with all his years of experience fighting just this sort of creature to take him out. In a few moments the demon was laying on the floor unconscious. Anne, with tears in her eyes, stood up shaking as Spike dragged the demon towards her. He looked at her and gestured towards the demon:  
  
"Snap his neck," he told her, but Anne didn't seem to understand or didn't want to. "Kill him. Cohegen won't be pleased by this, that much I can tell you," he whispered. "And if things keep going like this, soon he'll be talking about terminating the experiment. Just show them you got it. I know you do. I promise I'll get you out of here as soon as I can figure out how. Come on, Anne."  
  
"But...I don't want to," Anne shook her head taking a few steps backwards. "I don't want to!" she screamed this time and knocking down the door to her room, she ran inside. Spike closed his eyes and muttering a 'damn it' snapped the demon's neck. Haydn Cohegen looked on disapprovingly from behind the glass case.  
  
End Part 3 


	5. The Shadow

Part 4

The Shadow

Planet Phenias

The Mundagoon Complex

"Do I even have to point out the horrifying situation we find ourselves in?" doctor Domner asked leaning back in his chair uncomfortably.

Haydn Cohegen, who was presiding the emergency meeting that had been convoked after Anne's miserable failure at killing the demon, looked pensively at the doctors before saying:

"Maybe she is more flawed than we allowed ourselves to admit or we're simply going about this the wrong way. Offering her everything she needs. Giving her a choice. Perhaps that was wrong. If we want a leader we should create the conditions appropriate for breeding an elite militarist."

"I thought we wanted Buffy Summers," doctor Vecka pointed out.

"Buffy Summers is dead. What we have in there," Cohegen gestured towards the direction of Anne's room within the complex. "Is a bad copy with an extinguished flame. If we get the fire burning, then she might take one step closer to the greatness of the woman she was suppose to resemble."

"And if we can't force her to kill? To use her skills properly?" Vecka asked frowning.

"Then she will die trying," Domner interfered agreeing with Cohegen. "If she will not defend herself when her own life is at stake - in an uncontained scenario - then she is of no use to us."

"After all the trouble we've gone through to breed her?" Vecka protested. "Gentlemen, isn't all this too extreme?"

"But we do live in extreme times, doctor Vecka," Domner pointed out. "The slayer army is advancing. Soon, humanity will have to make its last great stand against it and we have no one worthy to lead our armies. Do you understand the gravity of this situation? We are nearing the brink of our extinction or do you doubt for a moment that they won't annihilate us to the last man, woman and child when they have reached dominion?"

Met with such a harsh reply, doctor Vecka remained silent.

"Do you all agree to my suggestion then?" Haydn spoke up. "That she be transferred in a more suitable area? The military bunks, for example, found a few miles from here would be a proper change."

"We'd have to reposition our surveillance equipment and move our entire headquarters there," Domner pointed out the inconvenience.

"Or we could reposition one of the military bunks," another doctor suggested. "Given the military's habit of building easily transportable and disassembling units, I don't think it would be a problem, whereas some of our equipment is very fragile and a proper movement would take days."

"Excellent point, doctor Mermer," Haydn nodded approvingly. "Then if you could..."

"I'll make the proper arrangements," he assured him.

"We'll also need an incentive," Domner pointed out. "Someone from the military. The harshest of the best we can find. Someone who'll push her hard."

"At least don't take away the vampire's visiting privileges," Vecka interfered. "They're vital to her mental well being."

"Spike will have his visits, don't worry, doctor," Haydn assured him. "As for a military officer to train her, I'll speak to the general this very after noon."

Anne's room

She was cowering in a corner when he entered her room after knocking politely on the torn out door. She was crying and it broke his heart to see her in that state. He crouched down next to her and put a gentle comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Hey," he whispered and she looked up at him with her big blue tear filled eyes. She stared at him for a moment before jumping in his arms, sobbing.

"Why did they do that?" she asked in between sobs.

"They just wanted to test your instincts, luv," Spike explained. "But it was too early. You still need time..."

"But I don't want to kill anything," she said pulling away.

"Now, now, none of that," the vampire told her wiping her tears away with his hand. "The doctor won't be pleased to hear that. And unfortunately for us, we have to care what the doctor thinks for now."

"Killing is wrong. No matter what you're killing," Anne protested.

"It's quite a different story when that 'no matter what' of yours starts killing everyone dear to you or innocent people," he said wisely.

"I don't want to know that kind of no matter what," she told him, her lower lip trembling.

"Shhh," he hugged her again, holding her in his arms as if she were nothing but a child. "Do you want to hear another story?" he suggested in order to calm her.

"Yes, please," a weak smile crossed her saddened face.

"All right then. No more tears," he pressed his lips to her forehead, holding her face in his hands. Anne's smile widened and as soon as he let go, she jumped in her bed, sitting down cross-legged on it waiting for Spike to start his story. The vampire headed over to the doorway he had come through and picking up the door, started attempting to put it back in its place.

"I'm going to tell you a ghost story," he said frowning when the door would just not sit in its place. "You're not too scared to hear a ghost story, are you?" he looked back at her and smiled when he saw Anne, holding a cover over her head shaking her head. Finally managing to make the door sit up somehow, he turned off the lights. It was night outside, so the room was dark. "Good, because it's a particularly eerie tale," he said nearing the bed. He turned on a small lamp that illuminated his face only partially, giving the impression of candlelight. He sat down in a chair next to the bed and smiled when he saw the slayer looking at him with wide eyes. "A long long time ago, when humans still lived on Earth, there was a town called Sunnydale and a great - bigger-than-life - battle took place there and I was chosen to be the hero of this tale. I thought I had died, but instead, months later, I found myself haunting the building of the most annoying of creatures..." he began his story, his eyes never leaving Anne's for maximum effect and his mind wondering down corridors he hadn't walked down in ages. 'Seems right this way', he thought to himself. 'I never did have a chance to tell her this story.'

Distracted as they both were, one lost in the past, the other in the fantasy world she could only imagine, not see, they didn't notice a third person watching them through the room's window, from outside. The woman seemed mesmerized by them, her eyes, of an unrecognizable color, stared at Anne in particular with a sort of sick jealousy she couldn't hold back. Her body was wrapped in a black cloak, her face was covered by fabric and as she watched them she felt the urge to cover her face even more. She touched the glass and a bitter sadness filled her every thought.

"Spike," she whispered, barely audible. Tears formed in her eyes. She pulled away from the window and leaned on the wall right next to it, brutally wiping away her tears, leaving bloody gashes under her eyes with her nails. She clutched her fists until it hurt and turned back towards the window with a much more determined attitude.

Surveillance room

One of the guards looked bored from screen to screen, hoping to catch something interesting on the many monitors that showed various chambers throughout the Mundagoon Complex. His partner had plugged in a set of headphones and had turned up the volume on camera 623 that showed Anne's room, to hear Spike's story too. The other guard shook his head and rolled his eyes. But on closer inspection of the screen his companion was watching, he noticed something strange. He put a hand on the other guard's shoulder and the man startled. He pulled down his headphones and looked questioningly at his partner.

"What is it?"

"What's that?" the second guard pointed towards a shadowed figure that he spotted by the window.

"Looks like a person," he only noticed the presence now.

"An intruder," the other guard corrected him.

"Should we sound the alarm?" he asked his hand ready to press the general alarm button.

"We'll lose him this way. If he got this far without being detected, then he's going to disappear at the first sign of commotion," he pointed out.

"What then?" he looked back at the screen with a frown.

"I have an idea," the other guard said with a smile.

Anne's Room

"I realized I could write on the glass. So concentrating real hard, I managed to...," Spike was interrupted by a ringing sound coming from within the room. He looked around confused and eventually, using his sense of hearing, he managed to locate the place the sound was coming from. He found an old fashioned telephone and smiled. They probably believed that 21th century memorabilia would somehow make Anne feel more at home. He picked up the phone.

"Yes?"

"This is security, there's an intruder outside your window," the guard told him. "Could you catch him?"

"Of course," Spike said with a smile, nothing in his appearance betraying what he had just found out. He hung up and returned to Anne's side.

"What's wrong?" Anne asked gesturing towards the phone.

"Nothing, they just...uhm, doctor Cohegen wants to talk to me," he lied and stole an almost unnoticeable glance at the window, immediately spotting the shadow of the figure that had retreated next to the window when he had stood up from his chair. But even this gesture was noticed by the intruder and it was an immediate sign of danger. Both her and Spike's reactions seemed to be synchronized. Just as she fled from the building, he jumped out into the night, breaking the window in the process.

He chased her to the gates of the complex, she was very light on her feet and used to the strain, so it was pretty hard for him, with his entire vampire strength, to catch up with her. He managed to reach her just as she started climbing up the gates in an attempt to escape. He grabbed her cloak and pulled her down before she had a chance to reach the top. The figure stumbled to the ground, but regained her balance very fast, taking a defensive fighting stance before the vampire.

"Who are you?" Spike asked her before she charged him. Her moves were somewhat predictable and the vampire easily dodged most of them, counterattacking others, but the strength and stamina with which she hit were not lost on him. Only slayers had that natural strength and capability to aim at a vampire's weak points. She managed to throw him off his feet and hit him in the stomach twice before he grabbed her leg and threw her away from him, giving himself enough time to stand up. Just as he searched for her fallen form around him, in the dark, she hit him from behind, imbedding a wooden stake through his back, but luckily for him, in the right side, not the left. He collapsed to the ground wincing in pain as the mystery woman made a hasty retreat over the complex's gates.

"Are you alright, sir?" a guard asked as he neared the fallen Spike as two other men tried to stop the fleeing woman with laser guns. But it was too late, she was already too high up on the gates to be reached by their feeble attempts.

"Oh, yeah, bloody peachy," Spike said as he struggled to stand up.

"Just stay down, I'll call the medical unit," the guard told him.

"Medical unit," the vampire chuckled. "Boy, I've lived for over a millenium and I never needed a damn medical unit to survive a little scratch like this."

"But sir...she skewered you," the young guard pointed out.

"Skewered, nearly killed. What's the difference?" he asked as he looked down at the piece of wood sticking out of his chest. "1, 2...," he pulled the stake out with both of his hands. He grunted when the pain sent shockwaves through his entire body. "3."

"Did you have a chance to see her face?" he asked looking at the gates as if desperately needing to look at something else except Spike's wound.

"Nope, her face was covered, but her eyes seemed oddly familiar," the vampire said thinking back to his fight with her. "One thing I can tell you though, she was a slayer."

"Figures," the guard shrugged. "Who else would be interested in finding out what's going on here except them. We'll have to double security."

"You do that," Spike said absently, staring at the gates in front of him. "I'm getting too old for this," he murmured to himself.

The Planet Corrian

Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army

Cincineel's chambers

"She's getting distracted," Cincineel said pacing in front of the half naked Thomas, lost in thoughts. "I should've never allowed it. She should have seen her only once. When she killed her."

"Relax," Thomas suggested, leaning his head on the pillows. "This can only feed her hatred."

"Are you sure?" Cincineel eyed him with a penetrating gaze. "What's stopping her from simply siding with her? Seeing how good and lovely she can be and what a monster she 't she suddenly decide that killing her would be a crime?"

"Are you listening to yourself?" Thomas chuckled. "You're getting way too paranoid and you know that's not a good quality in a leader. No human being, faced with a similar situation as Erinya, would ever side with the clone. This is instinctual hatred. Primal, it doesn't have a logic. It's absolutely irrational which is the reason why this plan is so brilliant to begin with."

"This whole situation is wearing me out," Cincineel confessed stopping her nervous pacing to stare absently at the floor. "Everything is hanging by a thread."

"The human armies don't stand a chance against us, with or without the reincarnation of Buffy Summers," Thomas assured her. "She is more legend than reality, Cincineel. You're afraid of a myth. Think of this logically, how could one person make a difference? How could this flawed copy of a hero stand against the might of your armies?"

"Too many leaders have failed by underestimating one single person," she pointed out. "I want her dead."

"And you will have your wish," Thomas told her. "Erinya will not fail you."

Planet Phenias

The Mundagoon Complex

Room 1134

Dollorian blinked several times until his vision cleared. His head was hurting and he felt like he was suffocating. He stood up in his bed far too quickly and felt like his world had started spinning around him.

"Stay down," the doctor told him.

"Doctor?" he asked weakly as he let his head fall back down on the pillows.

"You had an attack," he told him calmly.

"It was twice as worse as my last one," Dollorian muttered.

"Your condition has worsened," the doctor nodded. "But...," he hesitated looking at the vials that held the drug Haydn had ordered him to lie to Dollorian about. "I've been working on an antidote."

"Really?" his face light up with hope.

"Yes," the doctor looked away. "It'll be ready in a few days."

"Doctor, you've just become my hero," Dollorian said relieved.

The Conference room

"How the hell did this happen?" Haydn asked looking at the vague imagine of the intruder the guards had provided him with.

"The guards didn't see anything. The tapes are clean. I looked at them personally," Domner told him. "I'm afraid this can mean only one thing."

"Treason," Haydn agreed sighing. "Any leads on who the mystery woman is?"

"None whatsoever," Vecka interfered. "She was cloaked. Spike said she was a slayer."

"Figures," Haydn shook his head. "An assassin sent by the Slayer Liberation Army. How's the military bunk transportation going?"

"It'll be finished by morning," doctor Mermer assured him.

"Good. I don't want the vampire to know until Anne will be transferred," doctor Cohegen told them. "He'll just stir up trouble. Oppose us. Until then...," he looked down at the picture again. "We have a mole to find."

End Part 4


	6. Supersoldier

Part 5

Supersoldier

The Mundagoon Complex

Anne's room

She was sleeping in his arms. Like so many times before, like in so many of his haunting dreams. At that moment - in the present, in the now - in his arms. In this future that sometimes appeared to be nothing but a nightmare he had to awaken to each day in order to be able to sleep again and reenter the real world. The world where Sunnydale still stood tall and LA was not burnt to the ground and the greatest people he had had the opportunity to meet continued to live on. Forever. Eternal. But not the painful eternity he was subjected to, but eternal like only heroes can be. Unchanged, unphased, statues of a now crumbled world. The greatest slayer of all times and her scoobies, the most annoying over-gelled vampire - but at the same time the only real vampire hero the world was able to produce - and his angst filled posy.

No, he corrected himself mentally, the woman in his arms was not her. Not the woman he had known and loved. Not her. She was a copy. A good copy he had to admit, but a copy nonetheless. A pretty, naive girl with big blue eyes engineered for a purpose she did not understand. A pawn in a universal game.

A thud from the hallway disturbed his wandering thoughts and he looked at the closed door with a frown. Anne seemed to pick up on the sound as well as big sleepy blue eyes stared up at him questioningly. He caressed her hair lovingly in a comforting manner that assured her everything was all right. But everything was not okay. The door swung open and men dressed in military uniforms entered the room, aligning themselves in front of the door as a superior officer made his appearance.

The officer - a general, Spike realized by the decorations on his uniform - looked around the room with a disapproving frown before settling his gaze on him and Anne. He tilted his head to look at him with a sort of curious glance - vampires were so rare! - before turning towards the soldiers.

"Take her," he ordered and the men approached Spike and Anne. Anne, now awake, cowered in the vampire's arms, while an alarmed Spike tried to shield her in his arms. An electric weapon quickly rendered him unconscious as Anne was dragged away by the soldiers. As he fell into a deep sleep, he could vaguely hear a distant scream - or was it an echo?

"Spike!!!!!!" someone yelled, but he couldn't help that someone as his body was numb. He had been hit with a thousand volts of electricity. Anne struggled as she was carried away from the room, but her attempts to escape her captors were weak and futile. She was carried into a cubicle room with a small window, an iron bed with a too thin mattress and a small metal locker that was perched up on the wall. As the door was closed and bolted behind her, Anne looked around the room uneasy. She hated the small space, the hard bed, the ugly metal. Hated being alone, without the comfort of knowing that behind the room's walls people constantly made sure she was okay. She should have killed, she thought as she gathered her body in the middle of the military bed. She should have just let them have what they wanted. Tears formed in her eyes and despair, unlike anything she had ever felt, took over her heart and mind - the sort of sorrow only children can suffer so intently, of being unjustly punished or broken into doing things they did not want.

"But I don't want to kill anyone," she murmured as the tears slid down her face. No one could hear her. No one was interested in knowing what she did or did not want.

Niya's cell

"Did you know about this?" Dollorian asked as he entered the cell and held out a picture of an obscure figure in front of her.

"What? That black dots would mysteriously appear on your pictures?" she asked with a smile.

"Don't play games with me," Dollorian said in a serious tone. "The doctors are really pissed about this. Who is she?" there was a long paused in which Niya analyzed the walls as if they held the secrets of life itself. "Who is she?" he asked again holding the picture closer to her face as if it could determine her to speak. "Some hired assassin? Some suicidal supremacist slayer?"

"No and...uhhh, no, I guess," she shrugged.

"So you do know who she is," he realized pulling the picture away.

"Maybe," Niya smiled.

"Don't make this hard on yourself," Dollorian warned her. "I might not be too keen on torturing you, but there are a lot of slayer haters out there that are just waiting for a signal to do horrible things to you."

"Oh, how intimidating," she said with a smirk.

"This isn't the time to play the cocky slayer, damn it!" he let out frowning. "I know you all have this whole...untouchable façade you like to display for the whole world to see, but guess what? Right now you're not all that untouchable, Niya."

"Go to hell, Dollorian," she said with a disgusted look.

"Not before you tell me who this woman is," he gestured towards the picture.

"Cincineel decided to breed her when she heard of the little experiment the doctors wanted to conduct here," Niya said after a while. "She never told me if she had a name in mind for her."

"But what exactly is she?" Dollorian asked a little taken aback by the explanation. He was expecting her to be some famous mercenary or something similar.

"Not what," she shook her head. "Who," she corrected him.

"So who is it?" he asked expectantly after she didn't continue her phrase.

"I don't know," she lifted her shoulders. "I never had a chance to see her, remember? Cincineel was very discreet about her plan. I was her right hand and I only vaguely knew what it was about."

"Was she born...made, when we left Corrian?" he asked knowing there were hundreds of thousands of possibilities to who exactly this woman could be.

"I don't know, I told you Cincineel divulged very little about her," Niya reminded him. "She did however seem definite that her creation would be able to take down any version of Buffy Summers the doctors here could create."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously.

"Something about a slayer bred by humans never being as good as one made by slayers," Niya shrugged.

"That's just Cincineel's discriminating bullshit," Dollorian brushed it off.

"Is it?" Niya asked with a smile. "Then how come your slayer failed to kill a demon even when its life was offered to her?"

"Who told you that?" Dollorian asked suspiciously.

"I have ways of finding out," Niya said with a mysterious smile. "Besides, did you think I wouldn't notice the morale going downhill around here after a failure like that?"

"It was a miscalculation, that's all," Dollorian said defensively. "They've made the proper adjustments and I assure you Anne will not fail them again."

"How watcher-like of them," Niya smirked.

"Watcher-what?" he asked confused.

"Watcher-like," she repeated. "You know, in the old days before the cleansing of the planet Earth and the slayer-boom there were those old men who watched over the chosen ones...haven't you read any of the ancient scrolls? You are a slayer!"

"I did read them. Actually one of my forefathers was a watcher," he explained.

"Really?" the slayer asked surprised.

"Yes and if things hadn't changed the way they did maybe I would've been a watcher today instead of a slayer," Dollorian said pensively.

"Or maybe you wouldn't exist and the entire race of man would be decimated," she gave her opinion.

"Perhaps, but maybe then slayers wouldn't want to do the decimation themselves as they do now," he pointed out.

"You'd prefer not to exist rather than have to deal with this war of our species?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes and I would gladly die now if it put an end to this unnatural struggle," he nodded. "Man should not fight man."

"There is nothing else left to fight," Niya said staring at him intently. "Our history, the kind that was written for the whole world to see and read, is only made of greedy men fighting other greedy men for power and riches. You're a dreamer and a fool, Dollorian, the world you're imagining does not exist. Do you really think that if we are defeated – the superior race – it will end there? It will not. There will always be another struggle between men. Maybe not as defining as this one, but there will be others."

"You called me stupid before when I told you they were going to find a way to cure me," Dollorian said with a victorious smile. "Well they found it. I'm healthy now. I haven't felt this good in ages," he tapped himself on the chest. "And if this dream of mine came true maybe, just maybe, peace and understanding is not too much to ask for."

"What did they give you?" Niya asked frowning.

"You wouldn't know about it. It's brand new. Freshly discovered by the doctors. For me," he said smirking.

"Stop being such an idiot!" she suddenly yelled at him standing up in her bed and struggling against her restrains. "Do you really think they care about you? They have a war to plan, for god's sake! Whatever they gave you is probably just some fancy painkiller with an invented name! Don't be blind, Dollorian," she said breathing heavily as she gave up on trying to free herself and threw herself back on the pillows and closed her eyes. "One race will die in this war. One way or another. Neither the slayers nor the humans can afford the threat of having another species around. And if their plan succeeds, if this Anne will lead the Human Council's army into battle and win, do you really think they'll have much use for you then or her for that matter? You'll die like the rest of us, if you're lucky in battle, if not killed by the hands of the people you claim are here to help you now. If this is the path you've chosen, fine, but all I ask of you is to not be blind..."

Dollorian stared at her disturbed for a moment before backing away from her and leaving the room in a hurry without saying a word.

Haydn Cohegen's office

"What the bloody hell have you done?" Spike asked bursting into Cohegen's office, still a little woozy from the electric shock. "Where is she?!"

"Calm down," Haydn told him not even looking up from the files he was examining.

"You can be calm all by your bloody self, I want to see Anne," he told him annoyed.

"You can't," the doctor simply said and a furious Spike took the files he was studying from his hands and threw them against the opposite wall and banged his fists on Haydn's desk, leaving an impression on its metal surface.

"Do you really want another incentive?" Cohegen asked him as two guards appeared in his doorway holding electric weapons. Spike stared at them uneasily, recalling the prickling feeling of electricity running through his body. "Sit down," the doctor told him and gestured for the two guards to leave. The two men nodded and exited the office. "We had to make some changes concerning Anne."

"You didn't kill her did you?" he asked horrified.

"No, we transferred her to a different environment," Haydn explained.

"What kind of environment?" the vampire asked suspiciously.

"The kind that will stimulate her more primal senses," the doctor said. "She will be trained by military personnel from now on. You will still be allowed to see her, but only once every two days."

"That sounds reasonable," Spike's anger suddenly melted away.

"I'm glad you approve," Haydn said with a nod. "You have to understand she was not made for your enjoyment, but for a crucial purpose. She will be either our doom or our salvation."

"Of course," the vampire understood and stood up from the chair. "Just the same, I would've liked to have been told before so I wouldn't get this worked up about it."

"It was my decision not to tell you. I feared that you would react violently. I misjudged you and I apologize for that," Haydn admitted.

"Maybe I would've reacted violently a few millennias ago. But let's just say I've grown wiser in time," Spike said with a smirk. He headed for the door just as doctor Domner entered the office. When the vampire was gone, Domner asked:

"How did he take it?"

"Surprisingly well," Haydn answered him. "I guess even vampires become soft with time."

Niya's cell

Spike entered the cell and sat himself down opposite the slayer that observed him with curiosity. Two millennias ago, the vampire thought amused, they would've been battling each other in graveyards, hunting each other. He looked her over and definitely saw a vague resemblance of the Summers line. Something in the countenance, in her look, the way her hair fell on her back. Very small things, but they were proof that Niya was indeed a descendant of the greatest of slayers.

"What do you want?" Niya eventually spoke when she saw he didn't.

"I was curious to see how you looked," he said staring around the room to see where the cameras were hidden. There were four, one in each corner of the room.

"Well, ta-da," she said with a smirk. "Actually, I was pretty curious to see you too. You're a legend."

"That isn't worth much these days," he pointed out.

"You're practically part of an extinct species and you've lived through everything that's brought your kind to this turning point," she continued. She stared at him in silence for a moment then blinked twice and added: "Truth be told I was more curious to see Anne."

"Truth be told, I was more curious to see her too," Spike admitted.

"Have they already moved her?" she asked and the vampire was taken by surprise. "I'm well informed," she explained. "Come here, I want to tell you something private," he gestured for him to near her.

"How do I know that's not some trick of yours to try and kill me? I've seen slayers kill vampires with their bare hands before," he looked at her suspiciously.

"You don't," Niya said with a smile. Spike hesitated for a moment before leaning over to her. "There's a 30 second time loss every 5 hours on the cameras. Whatever you have to say, you can say it then." She pulled away and chuckled.

"That's...," he put on a shocked façade. "More than I wanted to know."

"Good," Niya chuckled. "I always wondered how it was for our ancestors...fighting all those horrid creatures by themselves."

"It was hard," Spike told her.

"But it must've been fun too," Niya said with a smile. "Being a slayer without anything to slay is boring. You feel incomplete. Like something's missing."

"That's why you're trying to kill humans now, luv," the vampire pointed out. "You can't just put aside slayer instincts."

"Say what you have to say," Niya suddenly said eyeing the cameras.

"Help me take Anne out of here," Spike said not skipping a beat.

"I'm a little tied up at the moment," she gestured towards her restrains.

"I'll free you, somehow," he told her in a rush. "Is there anyone else here I can trust?"

"Dollorian's weak, but you can manipulate him, just show him that there is no cure for male slayers," she said fast.

"There isn't," Spike stated confused.

"Precisely," Niya nodded.

"Anyone else?"

"There is someone, the person that's been feeding me information and that sabotaged the project, I think it's one of...," she suddenly started laughing. "You actually did that?"

"Yes, in the Middle of Times Square," he immediately caught on. The 30 second window had ended. "Well, I have to go, but I'll come visit you again," he told her getting up.

"You do that. I, unlike others, have all the time in the world," she said with a meaningful look.

Spike left the room and headed down the corridor. He hadn't lied to Cohegen when he had told him he had grown wiser in time, but not in the direction the doctor had probably understood. He had learnt that a quick violent reaction was most of the time unsuccessful and that a good sneaky plan was unbeatable.

Anne's training facility

"Is that all you got?" the general yelled as he paced in front of an exhausted Anne who had been under a hellish physical program since her removal from her room that morning. Her arms hurt, her legs hurt, her entire body was numb. Her arms trembled as she tried to do yet another push up, they failed her however and she fell face down on the floor. "What's this? Did I tell you, you could rest?"

"No," Anne murmured as her eyes half-closed.

"What's that?" the general screamed in her ear as he lowered himself to her level.

"No, sir," she let out louder this time. She wanted to sleep. Badly needed to rest and wash and simply not move.

"Get up," he ordered her. Anne didn't move. "Get up," the general repeated and poked her body with the tip of his boot. Anne slowly – too slowly – got up. "You know what your problem is, soldier? You have no determination, no respect and have no idea whatsoever what discipline is."

"Discipline, a term used to define a person's capacity to...," Anne started repeating one of the definitions that had been put inside her mind.

"Silence!" the general looked at her frowning and she instantly stopped speaking. He turned towards the two soldiers that had been present there during the training as guards and told them: "I'm sorry, boys, I'm afraid you'll have to skip dinner. We'll be here all night."

"But...," Anne protested with the tinniest of voices. She felt like crying. Tears formed in her eyes, but she didn't dare shed them.

"You're a slayer, let's see how far your superstrength can take you. Twenty laps around the facility. And I better not see you stop," he shoved her towards the massive training facility's wall and Anne started running along it. She couldn't feel her body anymore, it was so sore and she just needed to rest. Just for a moment. A second. A heartbeat. Her eyes closed and she collapsed on the ground. The general shook his head: "I was promised a supersoldier, but this," he gestured disgusted towards Anne laying on the floor. "This is nothing but a weak specimen."

End Part 5


	7. Monster

Everyone: I know it's been a while, but I've been very busy and haven't had much time or disposition to write fanfiction. I promise however that I will finish both this story and Teenage Wasteland in time.

Part 6

Monster

The Mundagoon Complex

Anne's military bunk

She was crying in a corner, hugging her body, when the massive metal door opened and a familiar figure appeared in the doorway.

"Spike?" she muttered when she saw the vampire entering her room. She ran straight into his arms letting all the frustration inside her flow out of her in a storm of tears that wetted the vampire's leather jacket.

"What have they done to you?" he asked saddened as he rocked her body in his arms like he would a little child's. He put aside the anger that was boiling inside him against the doctors, humanity's desperate need for a leader and Cincineel herself who had been the seed of this tormented creature's life – he knew full well it wouldn't help him with anything, only make the doctors remove him and refuse him any further contact with the clone.

"He wouldn't let me sleep!" she let out wiping her tears away with her sleeve.

"Shh, I know," he pulled her hand away and gently started wiping her tears away with his hands. "I've been watching you. From the top of the walls surrounding the training area."

"You were?" she seemed comforted by that thought somehow.

"Of course I was," he said with a weak smile. "I wanted to help you so badly. Beat the hell out of that bloody general they sent…"

"Why didn't you?" she asked confused.

"Way of the world, love," he said letting out an unnecessary sigh. Any little protest on his behalf would've been a good enough reason for the doctors to remove him from the experiment. So although it had torn him apart, he had been reduced to watching that horrifying general bully her – the shadow of the woman he had loved and that he still loved although she was long dead. Every moment he reminded himself that if he gave in to the anger, then his plan would never be fulfilled and Anne would never taste freedom. He had to endure it. For now.

"Tell me another story," she begged with tears in her eyes. "I want to hear another story."

East entrance of the Mundagoon Complex

The figure walked down the corridor, its steps echoing in the empty hallways. It was dark, it was late - too late for anyone to be wondering down those corridors. The cameras moved slowly from corner to corner as if they were tired as well and had suddenly grown lazy. The white coat reached down to his knees and he nervously arranged his glasses as he made his way towards the exit. Security had grown tighter since the incursion of Cincineel's assassin and he had to use his security clearance for each door he passed through. His palms were sweaty and he had the feeling that he was being watched by a thousand eyes. What he was doing was wrong. Or was it? What was he accomplishing again? He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Two more doors and he would be outside…He quickened his pace. The second door opened and then the last. He took in a deep breath of air and looked around the garden. It was a sort of relaxation area for doctors. Green was soothing, calming and sometimes that's what the doctors working within the complex needed. While ethics had stopped being an issue a long time ago in their profession, sometimes the enormity or monstrosity of what they were doing would become overwhelming. He supposed that was now such a time for him. Or maybe he was just weak, a little voice inside him thought.

As he scanned the area, he came across a figure hiding in the darkness and discreetly gestured for it to near him. Two knives suddenly flew in his direction and he flinched although the knives passed right by him and embedded themselves into two security cameras above him on the wall of the complex.

"Come on," he muttered as the figure finally dared to show itself. "We don't have much time. Anne is being kept in a military bunk attached to the west wall of the incubation area. The only way you can reach it is by going directly through the complex. I can get you inside, but I can't guarantee your safety or that I'll be able to help you if you're captured."

"Get me inside," she simply said.

"All right," he muttered after he held his breath for a moment. He turned on his heels and before opening the door he looked back at the woman and asked: "Why Erinya?"

"For obvious reasons," she said as she uncovered her face.

"My god," the doctor let out shocked while the woman quickly covered herself again.

"Door," she reminded the stunned man and the doctor, snapping out of his shock, quickly opened the door.

"You're on your own," he told her as she passed him by. She didn't say anything more, but disappeared down the hallway, in the darkness. When she was gone, he took out a transmitter. "Security? Something happened to the cameras on the East Wall. You should send someone to check them out."

Haydn Cohegen's office

"This is intolerable," Haydn said as he looked down at the two cameras with knives still embedded in them that were displayed on his desk. "We have doubled our surveillance. Nothing gets in or out without top security clearance. How could this…have come to pass?"

"Maybe she didn't do it from within the complex," the security chief suggested. "If she has a good enough aim she could've done it while she was perched up on the wall somewhere."

"The wall that's supervised by 321 cameras you mean?" Haydn asked looking up at the man with a frown. "189 of which are mobile and turn 360 degrees every minute and are synchronized in such a way that not one inch isn't covered by them every second?" The security chief shifted his weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other. What did the doctor expect him to say?

"Someone let her in," the general spoke up as he looked out the windows of Haydn's office. "Whether you want to admit to it or not, doc, you got yourself a loyalty problem in this fine establishment."

"Don't you think I've realized that already?" Haydn asked sighing. "The problem is for this sort of breach someone with high security clearance would have to be involved and there are only a handful of people who have it. And each one of them is dedicated heart and soul to this project."

"What about the vampire?" the general asked looking back at the doctor. "He has, from what I've seen almost unlimited access through the complex and to the clone."

"It can't be him," Haydn shook his head. "He cares too much for her. Besides, he was the one who stopped the assassin last time."

"Plausible deniability," he suggested. "Maybe it was orchestrated to appear as if he was saving her so he couldn't be blamed of anything if something happened a second time around."

"That's highly improbable," Haydn shook his head. "You replaced the cameras, right?" he addressed the security chief.

"Yes and we added two more just to make sure this doesn't happen again," the man assured him.

"It might be too late for that," the doctor muttered. "You're excused," he gestured for the man to leave. The security chief sighed relieved and headed out. When they were alone, Haydn asked the general: "Anyone else you might consider suspicious?"

"I haven't met your entire staff, but I suggest you pull out all their files and have them carefully analyzed by your top psychologists and logistic machines. You might be surprised by the result," he told him before heading for the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me I have a trainee to get back to."

"General," doctor Cohegen stopped him for a moment. "Suppose the assassin managed to get inside somehow. What then?"

"I think it would be an ideal situation," the general admitted. "We'd finally get to see how your experiment, put in a real hazardous situation, would react. If she survived it would cost the assassin its life and prove you haven't been wasting your time and otherwise…well, you can always brainwash the assassin and maybe get a decent general for our troops out of it. Something trained by the enemy could prove useful after all."

"Are you suggesting I don't try and find this assassin?" Haydn asked rising his eyebrows.

"Precisely," the general nodded. "And even more, I'd go as far as suggesting you tell your security people to simply ignore her appearance on the screen if she makes the mistake of popping up on one."

Anne's training facility

She was doing better. Running wasn't so bad anymore. Her muscles didn't ache too much, her breathing was regular and the general, although observing her with a frown and a face of stone from the sideline, seemed pleased by her progress. Her head was still full of the wonderful new stories Spike had told her that morning. Of the singing demon that had made everyone dance and sing in Sunnydale and the time the slayer had been turned invisible by the deadly geek nemeses trio. She smiled as she remembered those stories and she quickened her pace.

"What are you grinning at, soldier? You're not good enough to be sneering just yet!" the general yelled after her as she passed him by. She forced herself to keep a straight face. Spike had also told her about the day she would see what was outside the walls of the complex. She wasn't even allowed in the garden anymore. Before, watched by an army of doctors, she had been allowed short visits to the relaxation area where she got to breathe fresh air and touch plants and the bark of trees and the soil beneath her shoes. It had been a strange feeling considering she had spent all of her life between the concrete walls of the Mundagoon Complex. The thought of being outside the complex – alone, without anyone watching her every move – made her nervous, but at the same time, the simple idea made her smile and become giddy. She imagined herself running across an endless landscape that in her mind looked exactly like a million gardens, like the one she knew, put head to head. That was the only way she could imagine it as she hadn't seen anything else belonging to the outside world. She didn't even know that beyond the walls of the complex there were no trees or grass, only wastelands over wastelands as Phenias was a secluded deserted planet that had been chosen as a home to the Mundagoon Complex precisely because of those attributes.

As she continued to run, she saw a figure perched up on the facility's wall and knew that was Spike. She smiled up at him, but didn't dare to wave as she wanted to. She knew that would enrage the general. Instead, she looked back at the running track, focused on it and continued to run. 10 laps. 11 laps. 12 laps. 13 laps…

Room 1134

"Well?" Dollorian asked the doctor as he started removing the wires attached to his body. The doctor had demanded that he come to his office every day for the next few weeks so he could follow his condition closely. The drug used to ensure his recovery was after all experimental.

"It looks…," the doctor observed the screens that showed his vital signs were chaotic, his pulse too low, his kidneys were failing and his right lung was beyond any kind of recovery. His heart was under an abnormal pressure and blood vessels in his brain were threatening to pop at any moment. "Fine. Brilliant. Your…uhm, liver's recovering well."

"I feel great. You have no idea what a weight you've lifted off my heart," Dollarian said grateful, letting out a sigh of relief. "It's so horrible when…when you know you'll never be healthy again. That there isn't a chance…not even a glimmer of hope…and then…," he chuckled. "Relief doesn't even cover what I feel right now."

"I'm happy for you," the doctor said, feeling knot in his stomach as he did. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Of course," Dollorian told him smiling and putting his shirt back on, he left the room. When he was gone, the doctor rubbed his face tiredly and saved Dollorian's results to a file on his computer. By following his condition he could at least tell when he would be close to dying. It was only a matter of time now. He had given him a thousand pills to take as a supplement for the injection that annulled all his pain and Dollorian took them all, but at this point, it was pretty hopeless. The doctor just needed to convince himself he was doing all he could for the poor slayer. He desperately needed that assurance, if not for Dollorian's sake then for that of his own conscience.

The corridor outside Room 1134

As the slayer passed him by, Spike suddenly stopped, hesitated, then turning towards him, yelled after him:

"Dollorian, right?" The slayer looked back at him curiously. He apparently wasn't aware who Spike was. He had of course heard of his presence there and knew all the legends concerning him, but his appearance didn't strike a nerve. He had seen old pictures of him, in the slayer history books, but now beneath the leather coat Spike had clothes belonging to the modern day and age and half his face was obscured by the tattoo he had received in the vampire concentration camp.

"Yes," Dollorian said after a moment of hesitation.

"You're a slayer," Spike said and he nodded. "I went to see Niya yesterday. She mentioned you," he paused for a moment before adding: "I'm Spike by the way."

"The Spike?" he asked with a mixture of awe and suspicion. He had seen a real vampire only once in his life, when he had been a child and his parents had taken him to a zoo on Andalla. He still remembered the show the vampires were forced to put on. To show their fangs, drink the blood of rats for the enjoyment of the public. They were underfed and dressed in filthy rags. He had pitied them then until he had read a book on the old days and then he had thought they had gotten what they had deserved.

"The one and only," Spike said with a smile. He thought the reactions slayers –male or female didn't matter anymore – had when they found out who and what he was were highly amusing. "The girl says the good doc's put it to his mind to convince you he can make you all better."

"He already has," Dollorian said annoyed. Niya had been wrong. The doctor, the charts – which he didn't know how to read – all said the same: he was getting better.

"Don't be stupid, mate," Spike urged him. "Everyone knows slayer conditioning fucks up your cells faster than any deadly disease known to man."

"Every disease has a cure. It's been proven countless times before. It was just time someone found a solution for the problems of slayer conditioning too. It's been a flawed process for over 3 centuries, it had to be perfected at one point," Dollorian reminded him. "If you don't believe me ask the doctor," he said and gestured towards room 1134 and then stormed off. Spike stared at the closed door. Just as he was about to go inside alarms went off all around the complex.

"Anne," he muttered and ran down the corridor.

Anne's training facility

She was alone. The general and the soldiers guarding her had rushed inside the complex to see what all the commotion was about. They didn't worry about Anne. She was constantly being watched by cameras. The general, before leaving, had ordered her to do another few laps, but as soon as he was gone Anne had stopped running, even if she knew the general would find out she hadn't been doing as she had been told after viewing the video footage of the facility's security cameras.

She sat down on the floor cross-legged and breathed deeply. She looked up at the walls, hoping to spot Spike watching her from up above, but found they were empty. He had probably been drawn inside by the alarms going off as well.

"I hoped you'd be alone this time," a voice startled Anne and she turned around to see a figure dressed completely in black and with her face covered looking down at her. In one hand, she held a sword. Anne had a deep knowledge of swords implanted in her mind.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" Anne asked confused. "I know I'm suppose to know a lot of people, but I don't always remember everybody. Are you from Sunnydale?"

"You could say I am," the woman said as she reached out to remove the dark garment covering her face. "I am who you are. Only worse. Only better," she said and piercing green eyes stared into Anne's blue ones. Her face was, like Anne's, a copy of someone else's, except hers was horribly disfigured and only certain traits – the chin, the way her hair fell over her scarred face, the lips – vaguely reminded one of who she had been made to resemble, namely the greatest slayer of all times, Buffy Summers. "You see, we are both flawed in our way. I was too disfigured physically, you're too emotionally mutilated. They wanted to kill me when I was just a fetus because no one would follow a monster into battle; they bred you to be their great general. But to your great misfortune, I was saved." Anne said nothing. She continued to stare at those eyes. Green like the girl's in Spike's drawings. Green like hers would never be. Green like Haydn had wanted them. "And raised by the true heirs of Buffy Summers, Cincineel and the Slayer Liberation Army."

"Are you Buffy?" Anne managed to ask.

"You don't have a clue, do you?" she smirked and told her: "No, I'm Erinya. Do you know what an Erinya is?" Anne shook her head. "It's an ancient Greek mythological term. The Erinyes were the punishers of mortals. Those that inflicted divine judgment onto human beings. I thought it appropriate given the circumstances," she said rising her sword.

Anne held up her hand and asked innocently:

"What is divine?"

"Something you'll never be," Erinya muttered and prepared to strike her down.

"Anne, get out of her way!" Spike yelled as she entered the training area in a rush and jumped directly at Erinya. Taken by surprise, Erinya didn't have time to move and the vampire knocked her off her feet and the sword flew out of her hands. Applying a few kicks to Spike's stomach, Erinya managed to free herself and tried to reach out for her sword, but the vampire threw her out of its way. They went back and forth for a while until Spike managed to get the upper hand and grabbing her neck in an iron hold, chocked her to death. When he let go of her, her body fell limp to the floor. Anne stared at it wide eyed. "It's okay now, luv," he told her gathering himself. "She won't hurt you anymore." Anne neared the body hesitantly and kneeled down next to it. She touched the knife hidden inside Erinya's belt – she hadn't had a chance to take it out – and, after looking intently for a few moments at the lifeless green eyes staring up at the ceiling, Anne grabbed the knife and plunged it inside Erinya's eyes furiously, with tears in her own blue eyes. "Anne…," Spike muttered, but didn't dare to try and stop her. He couldn't know what sort of mixed up feelings Erinya had awakened inside her.

The Planet Corrian

Headquarters of the Slayer Liberation Army

Cincineel's chambers

Kenya rushed inside the room without even knocking. Cincineel looked up from the bed annoyed and pushed Thomas off of her.

"You better have a good reason to…," Cincineel started saying, but Kenya cut her off:

"Erinya failed. She's dead. The vampire killed her," Kenya told her in one breath.

"Damn it!" she let out furious and hit the bed with her fist.

"There were other news from the Mundagoon Complex as well," Kenya added and Cincineel looked at her expectantly: "The vampire is planning to escape Phenias. With the clone."

"Now that is good news," Cincineel said with a smile.

End Part 6


End file.
